Never underestimate the feeling you want to achieve in your space. That is literally the secret sauce for a successful design and a room that you’ll actually want to spend time in. This week I thought it would be fun to take you along on a creative journey to show you the process I use when beginning a new project.It’s all about feeling and the mood you want to achieve. In my opinion, getting the feeling of a room nailed down helps to keep you on track. It makes you want to get the project done. You’re excited to experience the way it will make you feel and that provides the momentum.
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Budget Decorating Refresh; How to Fix Up Your Living Room in 7 Simple Steps
It’s your turn to host Turkey day and your living room is blah. You’ve been meaning to give it a mini makeover for a while but the weekends have flown by like a like Phil Collins skipping across the pond for Live Aid in ’85. Time is not going to go slower and before you know it, Thanksgiving Day will be upon us and everybody will be at the door ready to get their turkey and pie on! Now is not the time to panic. There’s still plenty of time to get your living room Pinterest ready so that everybody gushes over it they won’t even notice if the bird’s a little dry. Here’s How to Fix Up Your Living Room in 7 Simple Steps.
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How to Accessorize Your Home Like a Pro Part 2
Call them finishing touches or final details, the accessories we add to our space tell the story of us. They show our friends and family what is important to us and what our personal style is all about. It doesn’t matter if your house is small, large, contemporary or traditional, these combined 20 tips will work. This is a follow up post to a piece I wrote in May of 2017. Just as in the first post, these new 10 tips for accessorizing your home like a pro will work for any occasion or season. I will be sure to link that original post below so you can check it out. Let’s get right into it.
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Why Dark Paint Color Can Make Your Small Room Feel Bigger
Sandy sent me a text message a few weeks ago. I had designed a room plan for her based on her answers to my questionnaire and talking on video chat. We agreed that light and bright was the way to go for her small living room. When she received the plan, she loved it but couldn’t shake the feeling that a super white space just didn’t fit her vibe even though that is what she thought she wanted.
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Don’t make this expensive common mistake in your small space.
I could hear it in her voice, total disappointment... My good friend, Anna had planned out and budgeted for her small living room makeover for months. She created Pinterest boards and visited showrooms for 3 Saturdays in a row. She moved all her old furniture into the adjacent dining room and painted the living room walls and trim. There was no going back now, the new paint colors didn’t go with the old furniture and so to keep things moving, Anna purchased her furniture and was thrilled that she was going to realize her makeover plans in a few short weeks.
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5 Essential Ways to Make Your Home Puppy Friendly
Getting a new puppy is exciting! If you’re like me, you’ve planned and searched for your new fur kid for a while. As soon as I saw her face I knew she was my baby. Those wrinkles, her coloring, the floppy ears, she was exactly perfect and I knew it. I’m pretty sure she knew it too! When I got to meet her in person, she walked right up to me, hugged my leg and wanted to be picked up right away. A few short days after that first meeting, she and I were in the car going home to our new adventures together.
Read More5 Quick Fixes To Improve The Feng Shui Energy In Your Home
If you’re feeling tired or stressed or unmotivated, indulge in this read because making a few very easy changes can help you achieve positive energy flow and a better understanding of how the arrangement of your stuff could be negatively influencing you. It’s about to get woo up in here but I promise you, if you keep an open mind, you’ll benefit greatly from these 5 quick fixes you can easily make to improve the Feng Shui energy in your home.
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Where to find inspiration for a room makeover when you’re stuck.
I got to thinking the other day about that Kohler commercial from years ago where this couple is being ushered around a sprawling Architect’s office and he’s going on about how amazing his work is, yada, yada. After his tour of self greatness he asks, “what can I do for you?” The woman pulls out a faucet from her purse and says, “design a house around this.” I used to laugh at that. How can a whole house be designed around a faucet? Fast forward years later and I’ve had countless meetings where clients have had inspiration pieces they want to incorporate into a space: treasured art, heirlooms, travel momentos, you name it.
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Stranger Designs of the 1980's
By now you’ve probably binged through every episode of Stranger Things, season 3 and you’re totally bummed that you have wait a year or more for the next episodes. I tried to make the season last and think I did okay, usually watching 1 or 2 episodes per day. It’s just that streaming gravitational pull gets me… The 5,4,3,2,1 countdown at the end…I swear Netflix is on a mission to get people hooked on shows like Whitney got hooked on crack! It’s legit TV show crack, and I’m on to them! I’m also willingly going along for the ride to crack town. Thanks Netflix. Anyway, no worries here if you’re not done with season 3, as this is not a spoiler post. This is an expose of stranger designs of the 1980’s.
Read MoreFurnishing a New House From Scratch? Here’s Five Tips to Keep You on Track.
Moving into a new house can be very exciting. Thinking about all the possibilities, all the ways you’d like to decorate the house. If you’re anything like me, you go through a space for the first time and your mind starts reeling with all the things that you can do with it. But before you get ahead of yourself it’s important to think about how you’re going to live, day to day in your new house. This determination goes above and beyond the durability and aesthetics of furniture. That’s certainly important; but I’m referring functionality as part of this excitement. A little bit of planning how you need your house to function for your everyday life can really help when you’re furnishing a house from scratch. Here are my top 5 tips so you can avoid headaches down the road and to keep you on track.
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Five Instant Ways To Get a Cool Color Scheme For Summer
It’s finally happening summer is almost here and I for one couldn’t be happier. Spring is my favorite time of year for sure because I love all the newness of flowers and green. Living in the Northeast US, the winters are long, and I complain often about how brown everything is. So, when Spring finally comes and the birds sing and flowers bloom, I get excited! With summer being literally one week away, I thought it’s a great time to tweak some stuff around the house. It’s time to put away the extra blankets and slippers and bring in some different ways to make home feel ‘summer easy’. So, in that vein here are five Instant ways to get a cool color scheme for summer.
Read MoreThe Right Way To Hang Wall Art
There are a lot of techniques out there to help simplify the art of hanging wall art… I know, bad pun. If you’ve tried to symmetrically line up pictures without a plan, I’m sure you’ve experienced some frustration. There always seems to be one or two pictures off. One’s slightly higher then the one next to it or off in some other way… The same could be said for asymmetrical installations; if something is off, it’s still really noticeable, right? Well, what if there was a super easy way to get your art up on the wall and aligned just the way you want it the first time? Best of all, you won't have to save this project for a long weekend cause you won't be patching and painting all the extra holes you would've made... Stop trying to eyeball where stuff goes. Let’s get into the right way to hang wall art so you can save time and leave your frustrations on the curb!
What Is The Best Material For Kitchen Counter Tops?
The kitchen renovation is scheduled and now you have to get down to deciding on your countertop and everything else. The choices for kitchen countertops is intimidating to say the least, right? How do you know what the best materials are? How can you make sure you’re up to speed on the best choices? Which ones are heat resistant? Which ones are the most durable? There’s a lot to consider when renovating a kitchen. Let me help you make this choice a bit easier. Today I’m going to answer the question: What is the best material for kitchen countertops?
Need Lighting Over The Dining Table? Here’s What You Need To Know Before Buying.
Candle light can really set the mood for a romantic dinner for two. Everything and EVERYBODY always looks better in candle light, don’t you think? Remember the movie Sixteen Candles, when Molly Ringwald finally gets to kiss Jake Ryan on her birthday? Que the song, “If You Were Here” By Thompson Twins.. Cut to Molly and Jake sitting cross-legged on the dining table, lavishly lit by 16 flickering birthday candles atop the perfect birthday cake… I mean come on! Does it get better or more romantic than that? Sadly, not every dinner can be so perfect. Even sadder still, not every dinner has birthday cake.. But if you use your dining room table often, (mine is used as a pop up office almost daily), then you’ll want the right lighting to make dinner time more enjoyable and all those other “non food related” activities at the dining table, do-able! So if you need lighting over the dining table, here’s what you need to know before buying.
The Fool Proof Way To Get The Right Size Dining Table
“We’ve moving to a smaller home and my formal dining set just doesn’t fit the new space, help!” I hear that almost every day. There is a building boom going on in Buffalo and the charge is being lead by the Baby Boomers and a few Gen X’s. For many couples, the kids are grown and out on their own and they are finally getting to have the home design they’ve always wanted. For the most part this new exciting chapter is filled with dreaming and planning new furniture layouts, color schemes. Some days are filled with wood, metal and tile samples, fabric swatches and a few little headaches here and there. One of those headaches being the dinning room. Now for some reason, and this has been my experience as a designer, people really know what they want their new great room/open kitchen to look like but the dinning space really throws them. If that’s the case for you and you’re struggling to finish up your new dining space, here’s the fool proof way to get the right size dining table. It’s broken down into 5 tips to avoid buyer’s remorse.
Should I Put Furniture In Front Of Floor To Ceiling Windows? Mom Said No, But…
I remember having this discussion with my mother years ago. Can furniture go in front of windows? As I recall, she did not like that idea much. Growing up my mother even placed her bed, angled, between the two adjacent windows in the bedroom to avoid the window. I think she was afraid of falling out of the 2nd story window or something, not sure. As I’ve progressed in my profession I have come up against this very question a number of times and I’ve switched up my own thinking about it. I used to think, “you can’t put furniture in front of windows! We’re you raised in a cave?!” But I’ve learned, sometimes the best place for furniture is in front of a window. And I think that this might be even more imperative when you have floor to ceiling windows, especially if they go around the space. To help you decide, here are 5 key points to consider when deciding, “Should I put furniture in front of floor to ceiling windows?
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Mix It Up! Get The Skinny On Mixing Patterns, Texture and Scale For Your Living Room
Let me guess, HGTV did it to you again. You’ve just binge watched Flip or Flop and Fixer Upper and now you’ve decided to spruce up your living room. You think - a little change, like some new accent pillows. So off to the rabbit hole, A.K.A., Pinterest, you go! Seven hours and a bottle of Pinot later, you decide, “forget it!” It’s not that you didn’t see anything you liked, it’s that everything you saw, you liked.. right? After doing a little math in your head and thinking that heat and hot water is a more responsible investment, you arrive at: “Let’s just keep everything gray and call it a day.” Well my Dears, I’m gonna let you in on five decorator tricks to make your living room come to life without having to spend the kid’s inheritance to make it happen! Let’s Mix it up and get the skinny on mixing patterns, texture and scale for your living room.
Mix It Up! Get The Skinny On Mixing Patterns, Texture and Scale, Trick #1: Mix Small, Medium And Large Patterns.
Yes, decorating has small medium and large, just like Dairy Queen! But unlike an Oreo Blizzard with extra Oreos, you don’t have to rationalize the pattern on your sofa’s accent pillows as a “cheat day” pass… like last Friday after the kids’ swim class. Anyway, mixing the size of your accent patterns, like pillows, area rugs and accent seating can make a huge impact in your living room style. It doesn’t matter if you like traditional, eclectic, or contemporary, when you mix it up and add in a small, medium and large pattern, you create visual interest and that goes a long way! This trick works for those of us who like lot’s of color and for those who prefer more neutral color schemes as well.
Mix It Up! Get The Skinny On Mixing Patterns, Texture and Scale, Trick #2: The Pattern Combinations That Work Great Every Time.
Let’s stick to accent patterns for one more minute. Trick number two, understanding which patterns work together always, is really tried and true. Sometimes, after a lengthy project and having to really rack my brain to get a layout that is functional as well as pleasing to live in, a process that I LOVE, btw.. However, sometimes it can be a relief to get to pick out the soft finishes like pillows, area rugs and drapes. If that makes you want to burry your head under the covers and forget that you even have a living room to decorate, then I have a short list of my favorite patterns to mix for maximum impact. Here you go:
Mix It Up! Get The Skinny On Mixing Patterns, Texture and Scale, Trick #3: Vary The Line And Scale Of Pieces.
Trick # 3 is all about creating movement with the objects that you place around your room. Most of the time your décor won’t literally move but, you can create a sense of drama, movement and energy with the composition you choose to arrange. The most important thing from this trick to remember is that you don’t want a dull composition where everything is the same height, and your décor is all straight lines up with no variation. Instead you want to mix your décor items, vases, pottery, picture frames, sculptures, etc. , where some items are taller than the others. Think of arranging your composition like a vignette that tells an interesting story that highlights a color, texture or theme to bridge the pieces.
Mix It Up! Get The Skinny On Mixing Patterns, Texture and Scale, Trick #4: Layer Your Décor.
Trick #4 is also closely related to #3 in that along with varying the line of your décor pieces it’s also really interesting and appropriate to layer your items as well. Placing a small sculpture in front of a picture that’s in between a tall vase of flowers or decorative braches is a wonderful way to create a moment. By layering your items in a composition, you automatically create interest and drama. This simple layering can do wonders for an empty corner that feels out of balance with the rest of the room. Layering a live plant in front of some tall vertically hung art in an empty corner is a classic way to fill an otherwise less functional space.
Mix It Up! Get The Skinny On Mixing Patterns, Texture and Scale, Trick #5: Mix Up Your Textures.
Trick #5 is all about mixing up wood tones, metals, stones and glass or pottery. Gone are the days where you had to match all the pieces in your space for the room to be considered “finished”. I say, good riddance! These days, in order to make a truly “designer” room, you want to bring in touches of distressed wood in an otherwise traditional room. Introduce a silver metal along with your brass accents. If you have a few tables that have turned legs, go ahead and bring in a metal accent table with straight pin legs and a stone top. Mix until your heart’s content!
There you have it! My 5 favorite tricks for mixing patterns, texture and scale for your living room. To review:
Mix small, medium and large patterns.
A tired and true list of patterns that look great every time!
Vary the line and scale.
Layer your décor.
Mix up your textures.
Michael is Principal designer and blogger at Michael Helwig Interiors in beautiful Buffalo, New York. Since 2011, he’s a space planning expert, offering online interior e-design services for folks living in small homes, or for those with awkward and tricky layouts. He’s a frequent expert contributor to many National media publications and news outlets on topics related to decorating, interior design, diy projects, and more. Michael happily shares his experience to help folks avoid expensive mistakes and decorating disappointments. You can follow him on Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook @interiorsmh.
Get The Most Purpose Out Of Multi-Purpose Furniture
Space saving, dual, triple, multi-function. That’s the key to making a small space work. I’m still on the small space kick that I was on last week. I just really like the challenge of designing small spaces. So if you need to have furniture function a few different ways or you’re afraid you’ll have to sacrifice style to get a functional space, then this post is for you my friend! Let’s explore a few ways to get the most purpose out of your multi-purpose furniture.
Your Entry Hall: How To Make The Right First Impressions
The entry hall. The portal to your world and the gateway to Firstimpressionville, population you! It’s not the main living space and it can sometimes fall victim to being overlooked or worse, completely forgotten. I get it. It’s not where the family is going to hang out and it is more of a utilitarian space; a storage area, in most cases. But before you write off the entry hall as simply a pass through to the more sexy areas, ie: the knock out Great room or the Chef’s kitchen.. Let’s focus on 5 really easy tips to make the right first impression in your entry hall.
What Is The Golden Ratio, And Why It’s Important For Decorating Your Home
Artists, architects and a slew of interior designers have been using the golden ratio to create “pleasing” compositions for centuries. If you flip through any art or architecture history book the evidence almost jumps off the page. There is something about how the elements are arranged that just makes sense. Why should you care? Well, let’s say that you’ve spent the weekend rearranging your furniture and after moving it around 10 different ways, you still feel that something is not “right” but you can’t quite figure it out. Chances are your room’s golden ratio is out of whack! Darlin’, we’ve all been there! So before you chuck the furniture out the front door and go full on minimalist, let’s really get into what the Golden Ratio is and why it’s important for decorating your home.